No, I’m not conflating them - the very definition of a liberal democracy (via Wiki):
so when you say
you are the one talking about liberal democracies first. Just because I used the name for the thing, doesn’t mean I was the first to introduce the thing into debate, or am conflating the two.
“Can” is a thing you sit on to take a shit. “Did” is what we concern ourselves with - History already has shown that liberal democracy is a wonderful anti-famine measure, and conversely, authoritarianism straight-up fucking causes them.
It’s incredibly naïve to think it’s just climate that causes famine. It’s *the response to it *that causes famine.
Please tell me you’re not seriously trying to hold up Colonial India as an example of a liberal democracy. Who’s trying to conflate the two now?
It’s not conflating the two to note that, historically and currently, the “good governments that care about all the people” have all been liberal democracies.
Sure it has, no argument from me there. I think you’re a bit confused - I’m saying that all good governments have been liberal democracies, not that liberal democracies have all been good governments.
Well, we can look at how Finland handled Russian invasion - they did lose, eventually, after kicking Russian butt, and retained sovereignty, if not all their territory.
I disagree. In a democratic government, the majority have the power to change the regime in charge. Any regime which goes around abusing the human rights of a lot of its citizens is going to find itself voted out of power. So democracy does have a self-correcting mechanism against widespread human rights violations.
Now granted, it is possible to have a democracy where the majority abuses the rights of some minority group. That’s unfortunate but nobody has been able to come up with a stable political system that avoids that potential problem.
And in a dictatorship, it’s much worse. In a dictatorship, it can be the majority whose rights are abused. Democracy at least limits the amount of abuse that’s possible.
Well, I certainly hope I’m wrong. But the estimates for their Gini coefficient in 1993 that I’ve been able to find set it at about 68, which is virtually the same as it is today. Brazil, by contrast, was about as economically unequal as South Africa in the early 1990s, but has made amazing progress. (The United States has of course gotten more unequal, so at least you can take comfort in the fact you’re doing better than we are). The ratio of white to Black average incomes is right now about 8:1 or 7.5:1, which is virtually the same as it was in 1994. (South African Indians, by contrast, have seen really big income gains). If either of these is false, I’d welcome correction. Of course you’re right that social inequality is much better than it was, but I was talking specifically about economics.
Well, I didn’t say that HDI was the only metric for a good society. The government of Cuba is founded on a set of values that I think are better than the values on which the United States is founded, and in the very long term I think offer a better foundation for a good society. But let’s take a closer look for a minute. It’s true that high HDI performers are overwhelmingly liberal democracies. Of the top third of countries, they’re all liberal democracies outside Cuba, Belarus and Russia (if you discount Persian Gulf petrostates, which one should probably do). I don’t think that’s terribly informative, though, because there are a lot of reasons Sweden is a more prosperous and generally happier country than Burkina Faso, beyond the fact that Sweden is a liberal democracy and Burkina Faso isn’t, or wasn’t until a month or two ago. (Parenthetically, I picked Burkina Faso as it’s near the bottom of the list, but it’s worth pointing out that their most beloved national leader, who’s still extremely popular and made a lot of concrete achievements, was also not a liberal democrat and refused to hold elections during the four years he ruled before being murdered).
The obvious trend I see on the list is that countries in western/central Europe, northeast Asia and North America tend to be the most prosperous countries in the world, and they also tend to be liberal democracies. The poorest countries in the world are overwhelming in tropical Africa, and include a some nondemocracies as well as some liberal democracies. I really don’t think one causes the other, though (or if there is causality, it’s much more likely it works in the opposite direction). There are plenty of factors that might contribute to a country both being more prosperous, and being more likely to be liberal democratic, without any causality one way or the other. That’s why I think you should compare (for example) Cuba to other Latin American countries, not to Finland.
I think historical contingencies make it too difficult to make any broad conclusions against the merits of liberal democracy as an anti-famine measure. Some authoritarian governments experienced famines, plenty didn’t. And it’s worth noting that while liberal democracies tend not to have famines, liberal democracy can coexist perfectly well with horrific levels of malnutrition. India doesn’t have famines any more, but I’m not exactly super impressed by the fact that they have hundreds of millions of people subsisting every day on a few bowls of rice and a couple spoonfuls of lentils.
93 is only de judice still apartheid, and 94 is post-apartheid. Get me the numbers for the 70s and 80s, and we’ll talk.
I didn’t say you said that. But it was the only metric you used.
Talk is cheap. What is Cuba actually like, is the important issue. And what it’s like is an HDI 20 places below the worst of the so-called “mediocre” countries
Of course there are lots of reasons. I say liberal democracy is a huge one. You want to discount it completely. You need to give a reason for that.
No. This is borne out by the fact that authoritarian states (and the worst ones. hitler, say?) have arisen in temperate and boreal areas many, many times.
Such as? This would be factors that don’t apply to authoritarian states, mind, so the geographical determinist argument you started building there is a wash.
No. I think a Finland-Cuba comparison is, in fact, a very good one to make - both having been colonial states and also Russian quasi-satellites, both having periods of Communist rule and civil wars, both not being especially resource-rich - but vastly different outcomes for them.
I’d expect that the dictatorship would have much higher rates of corruption and cronyism. I imagine that would have a worse effect on day-to-day life than the policies of a duly elected government I dislike.
Um, there are plenty of liberal democracies in Africa (since 1990) with high levels of malnutrition. And then of course there’s India, whose people still suffer from extreme malnutrition; I wasn’t kidding about a bowl of rice and a few spoonfuls of lentils.
It’s certainly the case some authoritarian regimes have ended up with famines, but the question was specifically, here, whether you would prefer a good dictator to a bad democratic regime, and I can’t think of any good reason, other than mindless ideology, why anyone would choose the latter.